Super healthy – and easy! – cod, veggies and herbs recipe

The packet with everything assembled and ready to seal and go into the oven. (Emily Spicer/San Antonio Express-News)

After a long day working, the prospect of a complicated dinner is daunting, but the prospect of zapping something fast is worse. This recipe for cod and vegetables is easy – and there’s almost no cleanup since everything goes into one foil packet. It’s cod, veggies, herbs and fresh orange juice and orange slices.

The recipe, which you can see here, makes four servings as is. I needed only two, so I used two Pacific rock cod fillets, but I decided to keep everything else is original quantities since I love veggies and lots of flavor. In fact, I added even more: 1 yellow squash, green onions and green beans.

Basically you dump everything into the foil packet and bake for 20 minutes. Easy, breezy.

The results were tasty, but a bit bland. Somehow the orange juice flavor (and there was half of a large orange’s worth in each packet) disappeared. And despite my using a whole bunch of fresh dill and fresh flat-leaf parsley, I could barely taste the herbs.

Still, this is such a good, healthy base to start with that I will keep experimenting. Next time, I will slather each fish fillet in chopped herbs, garlic and green onion. I think I will also add some red onion to the veggies, lemon juice to brighten the orange and a bit of serrano pepper for some heat.

The finished product. (Emily Spicer/San Antonio Express-News)

But I did go to bed feeling very healthy and like I had done something good for myself. And since I spent the day at work walking more than 5 miles on my treadmill desk, (learn more about my treadmill desk journey here) the last thing I wanted to blow all with an unhealthy dinner. So on to the next experiment!